Astronomers believe that a significant amount of our Universe is made up of mysterious dark matter (5 times more, in fact); it's invisible to every instrument, but can be detected because its gravity affects visible matter. Dark matter is usually found surrounding galaxies in an enormous halo, but British astronomers think they've found a whole galaxy just made of dark matter. The team used a radio telescope to observe the motion of a cloud of hydrogen atoms, and realized that it was spinning much too quickly, so must be largely composed dark matter to hold together.

Amateur photographer Paul F. Campbell took this picture of Jupiter from just outside his home in Washington, PA. Paul used a Meade ETX autostar in polar mode only, which has been supercharged by Dr. Clay Sherrod. The camera that I use is a Sac 7 CCD run by Astrovideo. The photo started out as a 1 minute video, with frames taken at 1/50 second. Paul then processed the video in registax 3 and then cleaned up the final photo in Adobe Photoshop. If you're an amateur astrophotographer, visit the Universe Today forum and post your pictures, we might feature it in the newsletter.

The European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft has uncovered evidence for a massive sea of water ice in warm conditions near Martian equator. Since temperatures in this region can rise above freezing, it could be a good location to look for life. The frozen sea measures 800 x 900 km across (497 x 559 miles), varies up to 45 metres (150 feet) deep. Previous observations by Mars Express of methane levels do match up to this newly discovered ice, so it builds on the theory that there could be microbial life living underneath Mars' freeze dried and irradiated surface.

Astronomers are finding supermassive black holes at the heart of nearly every galaxy they look at, and these monsters range in size depending on the size of their host galaxy. An international team of astronomers has turned up what seems to be the smallest supermassive black hole so far - only a million times the mass of our Sun - located at the centre of galaxy NGC 4395. Supermassive black holes can often be 100 times this mass, and NGC 4395 is one of a family of galaxies which tend to have very large black holes.

Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are. Or are you a star? Perhaps you're a gargantuan galaxy, capricious globular cluster or a burgeoning supernova. When I'm not sure what's attracting my fancy late at night, then I can use Neil Bone's, Deep Sky Observer's Guide to aid in identifying jewel-like sparkles in the sky so high.

There's no escaping the overwhelming light of the Moon, but who says we can't enjoy a bright star cluster? The M 41 awaits you! As the Moon goes full this week, we'll enjoy studying new lunar regions as well as learning a bit about Procyon, Capella and Rigel. Comet K4 LINEAR and Q2 Machholz are well positioned for viewing, but Southern Australia? You're in luck as the Moon occults Jupiter for you this coming weekend! So turn your eyes to the skies...

Because here's what's up!

Experienced observers tend to think its all so very simple. Buying a scope, setting it up, and using it for the first time lies well behind them on the learning curve. But if you really think about it learning to use an astronomical telescope is no trivial matter. So after being prompted by one UT reader, Astro.Geekjoy's Jeff Barbour decided to set down in word's how to go about making a start of our High Art and Science. Sometime's things aren't as simple as they seem...

Thanks to data gathered by Cassini and Huygens, scientists know that Titan's atmosphere contains significant amounts of ammonia - and this chemical could be responsible for the weathering on the moon's surface. Researchers from the University of Arizona believe that Cassini will eventually find that Titan has a layer of liquid ammonia-and-water underneath a solid crust of water ice. It's this liquid ammonia that could be creating the cryovolcanic flows discovered by Cassini on its first close Titan flyby in 2004.

A massive gamma ray flare flashed so brightly in December that it briefly outshone the full Moon. Even though it occurred 50,000 light-years away, the flare demonstrated the power of these events, disrupting the Earth's ionosphere. The flare occurred on the surface of a rapidly spinning, highly magnetic neutron star called a magnetar, which can release tremendous amounts of energy through a process called magnetic reconnection. We're lucky the flare occurred so far away; if it had happened within 10 light-years, it could have destroyed the Earth's ozone layer.

Astronomers from the University of Southampton have spotted the fastest spinning X-ray pulsar ever seen - it's rotating 600 times a second! The object, designated IGR J00291+5934, was first spotted as a bright X-ray object by the European Space Agency's INTEGRAL space telescope in December. Further analysis revealed that it's part of a binary system, siphoning material off of a companion star. The two stars orbit one another every 2.5 hours, separated by the distance of the Earth and the Moon.

In the last month planet hunters have uncovered 12 new worlds orbiting other stars, bringing the total planet count to 145. Two European planet hunting teams have discovered 6 gas giants as part of the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Search (HARPS), and an American team uncovered 5 more using the W.M. Keck observatory in Hawaii. And a single, Pluto-sized planet was discovered orbiting a pulsar by Penn State's Alex Wolszczan and Caltech's Maciej Konacki.

Just two days after visiting Titan, Cassini swept past another Saturnian moon: Enceladus. The spacecraft got within just 1,180 kilometers (730 miles) of the bright moon. Enceladus is unusual because of the high reflectivity of its surface, which resembles freshly fallen snow. But in this close-up view, the best ever taken, it has a much more wrinkled look. Enceladus is only 505 kilometers (314 miles) across.

As early as a billion years after the Big Bang, clusters of galaxies were already forming together according to observations made with the Subaru Telescope. This is much earlier than astronomers had expected, and shows that galaxies didn't need to fully form before they began organizing into clusters. A team from Japan studied hundreds of galaxies approximately 12.7 billion light years away and found that many were forming small clusters even as they were forming some of their first stars.

In some ways, the bright auroras at Saturn's poles are very similar to our own Northern/Southern lights here on Earth. But in other ways, they're very different, and it's a mystery that has been puzzling astronomers since they were first discovered 25 years ago. Saturn's auroras can brighten for days (compared to minutes here Earth), and can stay still while the planet rotates underneath. Now scientists have used observations from Hubble and the Cassini spacecraft to develop a new theory about how Saturn's magnetic field interacts with the solar wind to produce its unusual auroras.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft spotted a large impact crater on Titan during its flyby on Tuesday. The crater is 440 km (273 miles) wide, and has unusual parallel lines on it (researchers have nicknamed them "cat scratches"). It's believed that these lines could have been formed by winds, like sand dunes on Earth or Mars, but it's also possible that another geological process is at work.

Amateur astronomy may very well be the most popular and quickly growing scientific hobby in the world today. This popularity undoubtedly has a basis in the fact that astronomy covers a lot of "turf". Meanwhile the existence of the Internet has made it possible for observers to share their love and knowledge of the sky while working together and advancing the state of the art. Finally, the fact that telescopes and binoculars are so readily available in great diversity of cost, quality, and capacity doesn't hurt either.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft made its fourth flyby of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, on Tuesday. At its closest approach, the spacecraft swept past the surface at an altitude of only 1,580 km (982 miles). It took images that will help scientists study the moon's clouds, atmosphere and surface structures. NASA is also hoping Cassini will be able to spot where Huygens landed on Titan in January, to give researchers a better idea of the terrain that the probe landed in.

Even though SMART-1 has only just reached the Moon, controllers with the European Space Agency have decided to extend its mission a year, wrapping up in August 2006. This will give the ion-powered spacecraft more time to map the Moon's surface in high resolution. Another benefit of stretching out the time frame is the fact that spacecraft will be placed into a more stable orbit, conserving its fuel. SMART-1 should arrive at its final science orbit by the end of February.